A jury ruled Friday that a labor union defamed Sutter Health with a mass mailing of postcards and awarded the Northern

California health care organization almost $17.3 million in damages.

The Placer County jury found that Unite Here, one of the nation’s largest unions that represents hotel, restaurant and laundry workers, defamed Sutter Health early last year by sending postcards to women of child-bearing age in Northern California claiming the organization’s hospitals used unclean linens. The union was in a labor dispute with the laundry service that cleaned the linens at the time.

Sacramento-based Sutter Health runs a number of Bay Area hospitals, including Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch.

“We are pleased that leaders of Unite Here have been held legally accountable for recklessly frightening patients and the public through outrageous and false allegations,” said Michael Roosevelt, chairman of Sutter Health’s board of directors.

In a statement released following the verdict, Dr. Gordon Hunt, chief medical officer for Sutter Health, said the mailing triggered numerous anxious calls to the hospitals.

“We have strict quality assurance processes in place to ensure our linens meet our high quality and safety standards,” Hunt said. “To suggest something to the contrary, in an attempt to scare patients, was dishonorable and unconscionable. The jury’s verdict confirms this.”

The union, however, is undeterred by the verdict and plans to appeal it, said Amanda Cooper, a spokeswoman with Unite Here. “The court record shows that the problems we were alerting customers to were real,” she said.